


too early in the morning for this

by Voidromeda



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23532724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voidromeda/pseuds/Voidromeda
Summary: Sitting down, reading over his data pad and staring at the information in his hands, Keeler can't help but give a confused smile at the situation he is in and that he has to deal with.Now why, he wonders while he thinks about the fair-skinned navigators and their tendencies,why would Abel want to kill Cain?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	too early in the morning for this

**Author's Note:**

> *starts playing the synth and evil xylophones at the exact same time*
> 
> I don't know anything.

There are a lot of things that can be said about the navigators, that Keeler can attest to – Lead Navigator, the one everyone looks up to and often pesters for guidance instead of Cook, which always makes it hard to hide the smile whenever people seek him out. Behind him is almost always a stoic Cook who he likes to imagine is fuming, blood boiling over from his superiority often being neglected for the sake of speaking to Keeler instead. One of the things he can attribute to the navigators is ‘pettiness’ – even in the purest and kindest of them all lies a nasty little streak, demanding to lash out and tear everyone apart.

Another is proud – even those who pretend they have none preen at the chance to be acknowledged, gloating in their own way, dancing around the bush and refusing to state outright their confidence in themselves.

Greedy, selfish, self-serving, petty, proud, condescending, stereotypically beautiful, stereotypically desirable, naïve, and full of crocodile tears.

He supposes, then, that raises a good question: since when have navigators become murderous? Stress makes his heart tighten and he places a hand atop his chest while he reads over the tablet, the stress dancing alongside some morbid amusement at what he reads on the data pad. His eyes scan over the words, the picture, reads over the report, and he has to fight back the bewildered and bemused smile that threatens to take over his visage.

“How then,” Keeler proposes to a room of navigators and fighters, both divisions coming together to try and process what happens, and everyone sits up in alarm at the sound of his voice, “do you propose we explain this?”

No one speaks. The smile spreads on his face, difficult to hold back now that everyone is just awkwardly avoiding his gaze. “Why then,” he tries again, eyes roaming over the fighters before piercing straight through Ethos, “did Abel kill Cain?”

* * *

The weapon is something on the ship itself, but nothing that is originally intended for danger – the mechanics have a laser ‘knife’ that can go back and forth between the knife and a beam, helping to weld metal together or slice through it should the need arise. It makes it easier to get through to smaller issues, never really needed for anything big as the laser knife isn’t strong enough to weld things as large as a door.

That is the murder weapon that sticks out of Cain’s throat when they find him – stabbed from behind and a bleeding mess as he lays face down on the floor, uniform half removed. In the corner sits Abel, eyes vacant as he stares into the wall and his own data pad sitting listless in his palms. He is the one who calls them in and asks them to help him with a matter, and he is the one who confesses to his own crime near immediately when he sees the others.

They stuff Cain away in the ship’s morgue after their medical examiner/doctor looks him over despite not really needing to, the morgue being in the lower decks as to keep it out of sight and away from the other fighters and navigators to keep them from freaking out. Further inspection really does reveal that Cain just does not expect the blow – the knife, able to pierce through metal, slides through his neck easily and kills him quite quickly, if not instantly.

Abel is in a state of shock, says the on-board psychiatrist. “He’s going to need therapy after this,” she says while Abel sits there, gaze empty and vacant, “and he’s in no state to explain the situation. I can give him some medicine after he gets an actual therapist to look at him and assess what the issues are, but he most definitely has gone into shock and is mostly unresponsive, save for repeating his earlier confession – he shows no sign of physical injury and no signs of self-harm.”

“And getting a therapist for him is unavoidable, I assume?” Keeler says, more to be sure than anything else. The psychiatrist, Jupiter, shakes her head.

“He is under a lot of stress – lower weight than usual, heavy shadows around the eyes indicating less and less sleep and an increasing reliance on sleeping pills, and increasing migraines should the medics’ reports be trusted. Whatever drove him to this needs to be assessed and his mental health examined before standing before a court of law to determine whether or not this is a plea of insanity, premediated or not premediated.”

They don’t really have officers on the ship, but some of the ‘nicer’ fighters take place of the police and make sure that people don’t wander too close to Abel and Cain’s bunk. Encke is the lead ‘police investigator’ for this one, though Keeler is the one who has access to the files to figure out how to help Encke out. Phobos is the only one who knows anything about law, and that is only because he takes it as a hobby one semester and nothing more – and even then, he admits that he takes the law course in France before transferring back to America. The laws he knows may not even apply to this situation.

The one good thing is that due to a loophole in the system navigators will not have to go to military court whereas fighters do. He supposes that at the very least Abel will get off a light sentence due to being a navigator and, if his family history is to be believed, the son of an important political figure who is garnering a lot of support due to his proposal to ban gay marriage once more.

As long as the navigators set to work destroying any evidence of Abel’s evident homosexuality, he will most definitely be fine in a normal court with his father’s support. With the public opinion of Martians being at an extreme low, his odds are even higher of a lighter sentence. The main issue is actually getting him back to Earth, which means they have to carry out their own investigation and try to figure the situation out. Keeler really isn’t meant for this, but neither is Encke… nor anyone else on this ship.

* * *

Cook is the one who, surprisingly, lays everything out for them:

  1. First, Deimos had been stalking Abel on Cain’s request. Because Abel never noticed, nor did anyone ever bring it up, nothing was done about it.
  2. Cain and Abel often argued when they went back to their bunk.
  3. Their sex had a lot of consent issues, from both ends – with Cain forcing himself onto Abel and later Abel forcing Cain to have sex with him. Both instances of sex had to be done under a lot of persuasion and threats.
  4. Cain would regularly bite Abel to the point of bleeding on his mouth and later on whenever Abel tried to slap him, he would grab his hand and bite his wrist.
  5. Abel’s attempts at talking to others would be thwarted by Cain swooping in, Deimos threatening others, or others seeing the scar on his mouth and steering clear of him.



He shoves a USB stick of footage over to the ‘investigation team’ and leaves them be, letting them look at the camera recordings over and over again until Keeler is sick and tired of it and the few navigators on the team look sick. At the very least it is a mutually toxic relationship, Keeler thinks to himself, either Cain will kill Abel or the other way around and there is no convincing the court to give a fighter a lighter punishment if the fair-skinned Abel is to be killed.

In a way, death is a better end for Cain than whatever the prison will do to him. Keeler knows how the ‘fighter’ prison is, where it is set too far from American soil to follow the laws.

“I still think these cameras are super creepy,” one of the fighters – Athos, surprisingly – says, “but I mean… it helped us figure out what happened to Cain, right? What’s next to do? We have it all sorted out, right?”

Encke rubs his face. “Abel has to be taken to court,” he says, blankly, “because of the way self-defence has been changed for the new military system and divisions, with the stigma against fighters and the pushback against ‘punishing’ navigators for simply ‘defending’ themselves against ‘the nasty brutes’, we can’t have him be court-martialled.”

“Isn’t that unfair?” says another fighter, Hesperides is his name.

“Yes, but those are the rules,” Encke says bluntly, almost as if this is nothing new. Keeler just smiles helplessly, unsure of what else to say to that.

“He could even plead for battered woman syndrome,” Keeler points out, “despite the name, any gender has the right to use it now. There are no real precedents for it being used by men or masculine-leaning types, but the issue is whether or not the support of the jury is greater than the support of his father.”

The fighters look at him, clearly confused over Keeler just giving away sensitive information like this – or, what will normally be sensitive information if Abel isn’t a criminal who is locked up in their ship.

“I know what he’s talking about,” Porthos interjects, “I’ve seen Abel’s pictures when I was on Earth before, and I know who his father is. I think spinning the case as something related to physical assault is better than trying to go for battered woman syndrome.”

Cook gives them permission to ‘make mistakes’ in regards to some of the footage, making sure to cite it as faulty equipment due to them being underpaid by the government and causing them to lose a lot of footage. Of course, it still doesn’t answer as to why Abel kills Cain – inferences can be made and he confesses to the act, but the footage of him stabbing Cain in the throat from behind only has him looking at the fighter, watching him undress, and then grabbing the laser knife from his military-issued bag and murdering the other man.

It _looks_ intentional – but he supposes trying to figure out if it is or isn’t premediated is by figuring out how Abel gets the knife.

That part, hilariously, is foggy; despite Cook using the lie of faulty equipment for them destroying footage of any gay sex or interactions, their old computers does actually result in the deletion of footage necessary for this investigation. The mechanics have been complaining for some time that the machines they use to monitor anything is going to stop working any time soon and leave them stranded but Keeler never realises how truly bad it is until now.

The only thing they can glean is that Abel is friendly to the mechanics and engineers and often plays poker with them. Praxis gets questioned as well when they realise he is the only one who really talks to Abel, but they dismiss him when they realise he isn’t much help. Reviewing footages of his conversations with Abel are also not helpful. Ethos is interviewed as well, but the thing he knows is that he ‘thought Cain and Abel had a good relationship, he had no clue about anything.’

All in all, the only thing left in this investigation is to just… wait.

* * *

“This is quite the situation we have ourselves in,” Keeler says now that all the fighters and navigators have gathered up again, Encke by his side and looking extremely done with it all, “as you know, one of our navigators – codename Abel – has committed an act of crime by killing his fighter with an engineer’s welding knife. Though we are currently investigating the case and are assessing the situation, we have found Abel as not dangerous to anyone else on the ship.

“Currently he is in isolated containment and will not be let out without heavy guard and supervision. Our mission will have to be paused while we head back to Earth and have Abel tried in court. Due to this murder, however, securities will be increasing:

“Navigators and fighters are no longer allowed into the engineering bay. All forms of navigator and fighter ID, except for mine, Encke, and the commanders will no longer work on the door to the engineering bay. The only exceptions are for training simulations, which will now be closely monitored and occur less frequently while we are on our way back to Earth.

“Gun load will increase and AI turrets, once deactivated, will now be reactivated and will fire on immediate sign of danger. Curfew is now at twenty-hundred hours. Dismissed.”

Everyone erupts into noise as they begin to leave, murmuring and complaining about the new security measures even as Keeler waves them off and refuses to answer any questions. He turns to the only navigators – Phobos, Porthos, and Ethos – and fighters – Deimos, Athos, and Praxis – left behind. He eyes Deimos, who looks away from him. He is the one fighter he specifically asks to stay behind; the others do so because of their own personal obligations.

“You know that you will be found guilty of stalking, correct Deimos?” Phobos glares at Keeler then immediately deflates when he gives to him a piercing stare, as if daring him to continue. He looks back over to Deimos. “You will be found guilty of stalking and, if you’re unlucky, helping Abel be isolated and made an easier target for physical assault. Do you understand this?”

Meekly, Deimos nods.

“On our way to Earth, we will be looking over a new wave of fighters to decide which one to take back onto the Sleipnir. Phobos, since you stayed behind and made this all easier: you are no longer part of the flying units until you have a fighter again. Your workload is also drastically increased and you’re going to be under heavy monitoring.”

“But I didn’t –”

“You associated with Deimos and have shown signs of knowing that he was stalking Abel. Unlike Praxis, you simply allowed for this to happen. Now, you won’t go to court, not at all, but you _will_ be watched closely because _I ordered it so._ **Is that understood?** ”

“… Yes sir.”

Keeler sighs, “then, what are you waiting for? You’re all dismissed. Don’t come back here unless I say so, and navigators – keep your data pads at hand to check for schedule changes. Encke, if you will, please take Deimos to the containment brig. I need to rest, this has been quite the ordeal.”

When everyone is gone and Keeler is the only one in the room now, he looks back down at his data pad and stares at the information that the investigation team and him gather up. He shakes his head.

What a messy, messy situation they find themselves in.

**Author's Note:**

> Aggressively plugs my [twitter](https://twitter.com/voidromeda) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/flynn)


End file.
